The sparks of war

Vietnam at 50: 1967

It’s 1968 that was the bloodiest year of the Vietnam War, but 1967 – the year that set the foundation for the bloodshed to come – wasn’t far behind in its body count. In sharp contrast, this was the year in which the “Summer of Love” saw protests from the serious to the absurd cross America.

The sparks of war

Viewed through the prism of time, the years after World War II can seem like an idyllic era, with U.S. power supreme, the middle class thriving and families living stable “Ozzie and Harriet” lives after decades of war and economic depression.

Love, protest, music and ‘madness’

1967 was a time of change and hard questions, a coming of age for a generation with bipolar views about the war. It was the year that those who answered the call to serve and those who burned their draft cards battled for the identity of their generation.

Charlie Company, 1967: an unlikely friendship

From massive moments of traditional warfare like Operation Junction City, to battles in defense of exposed and vulnerable Marine bases along the Demilitarized Zone like Con Thien, to stealthy long-range reconnaissance patrols – American forces across the length and breadth of South Vietnam sought to bring overwhelming firepower to bear on their North Vietnamese and Viet Cong foes.

Vietnam and Hollywood: The realism quotient

As far as authenticity is concerned, Hollywood’s Vietnam War films have run the gamut from uncannily realistic to cartoonishly foolish. The producers and directors of the most realistic films have gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure everything you see and hear on screen is as close to the real things as possible. Other directors, well, have not. Which are the best of the best? Read to find out.

High school with highest death rate in Vietnam embraces its legacy

Thomas Alva Edison High School, had the highest casualty rate during the Vietnam War of any high school in the United States – a fact that’s confirmed by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund and one that has been recognized by local, state and federal government officials. It’s a designation the school has embraced.

Documentarians peel back decades of pain in 'The Vietnam War'

The culminating chapter “The Vietnam War,” the epic documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, brings together former enemies as they try to make sense of the war.

War stories: Vietnam War journalists share examples of courage

Vietnam-era war correspondents wore uniforms, ate field rations and shared many of the deprivations and dangers of ordinary fighting men. Five decades later, their ranks are thinning but those who remain are still telling stories.

US, Communists locked in a bloody stalemate

The year 1967 was a turning point in the war, a period of violent escalation when the U.S. military deployed larger troop formations, waged bigger battles and killed hundreds of enemy fighters. The Communists, meanwhile, learned from their losses.

1966: Troops and protests increase, enemy digs in

Vietnam at 50: 1966

1966 was a formative year for America as its military began to increase its presence in Vietnam.
Read more about the year’s major events in these features collected from the men who were
there.

An introduction to 1966

It was the year of the reality check, when Americans and their own government began to realize
just what they faced in Vietnam — a resourceful and tenacious enemy, quarrelsome allies
and an Asian society whose complexity they could barely understand.

Vietnam: The first rock and roll war

The sonic revolution and one-upmanship that defined 1966 make a compelling case to call it the greatest year in music history.

Authors explore the music of the Vietnam era

Doug Bradley, a Vietnam veteran, and Craig Werner, a professor of Afro-American Studies at
the University of Wisconsin-Madison, met at a Christmas party at the Madison Vet Center in
2003.

Marines reunite, reminisce about The Basic School

Most of them took the military road before they knew it was headed to Vietnam. They were high
school graduates in 1962 – intelligent but not necessarily wealthy, and for many, ROTC scholarships
meant a free ride to a college degree.

Two pilots, once enemies, now friends

Tu De, a 16-year-old from Hanoi, spent most of 1966 learning how to fly fighter planes in the
Soviet Union. Capt. Pete Peterson, a 10-year Air Force veteran, kissed his pregnant wife
and children goodbye, and headed off to bomb enemy routes in Vietnam

Flying solo in 1966 with a thousand missions to come

While President John F. Kennedy was sending more military advisers to Vietnam, I was attending
the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps classes in the armory at the University of Oklahoma.

Decades later, vet goes back to Vietnam for good

Michael Cull is sipping a smoothie on a beach deck at the Sailing Club, sitting in nearly the
same spot he did as a soldier 50 years ago.

Stumbling into war

Vietnam at 50: 1966

In his inaugural address in 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson made no direct mention of the
war in Vietnam. But within weeks the president would redefine America’s role in the war with
dire consequences for the country, his presidency and American optimism and faith in government.

What led the US to the Vietnam War?

On March 8, 1965, two battalions of about 3,500 Marines waded ashore on Red Beach 2 — becoming
the first American combat troops deployed to Vietnam. In the ensuing months they were followed
by thousands more combat forces, making 1965 the year the United States transformed the Vietnam
conflict into an American war.

New role in Vietnam has dire consequences

At the dawn of 1965, America was assured of its moral supremacy and confident in a future shaped
for the better by its own enterprise, ingenuity and vision. Fighting in Vietnam was not yet
a major concern and few foresaw how it would divide the country and cultivate an abiding
cynicism and distrust in government.

From the front lines of Ia Drang Valley: ‘Killing, dying and suffering indelibly marked us
all’

Joseph Galloway, 73, is a veteran war correspondent who did four stints in Vietnam, including
a 16-month tour in 1965, during which he covered the pivotal Battle of Ia Drang Valley. Despite
being a civilian, Galloway was awarded a Bronze Star with “V” device for valor by the Army
for rescuing a badly wounded soldier under fire.

Budding anti-war movement 'changed everything'

On March 15, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson gave a speech decrying the brutalization by
200 Alabama state troopers of hundreds of peaceful civil rights protesters in Selma planning
to march to the state capitol in Montgomery. “Our mission is at once the oldest and the most
basic of this country — to right wrong, to do justice, to serve man,” he said.

A friendly chat between Marines and Viet Cong

Fifty years ago, two of the men sitting around this table at the Red Beach Resort were enemies
of the United States. Decades later, they sat down to talk to Marines they once called foe.

Families in Hanoi in 1965 evacuated, often separated

In 1965, the U.S. began Operation Rolling Thunder, an air campaign aimed at encouraging the
beleaguered South, while reducing the communist North’s morale with targeted bombings. By
the end of the year, more than 180,000 U.S. troops were at war in Vietnam.

Features

Vietnam's lasting legacy

Vietnam's lasting legacy

The draft forced hard choices for the men who fought, and those who didn’t. But it also led
the way to today’s professional all-volunteer force. And the fear of another Vietnam quagmire
became the lens through which today’s military action is viewed.

Legacy etched in Vietnam wall, Jan Scruggs ready to retire

No one had heard of Jan Scruggs until he took a week off to start planning what would become
one of the most recognizable monuments in the country.

The lingering stigma of the 'troubled vet'

As Vietnam veterans came home, they were often stereotyped as being angry, depressed and unable
to cope with society. For some, that was reality. Others simply wanted to live an ordinary
life, far removed from the battlefield.

Returned photos reveal a father never known, 50-year-old promise kept

Army Pfc. Pierre Mathieu Van Wissem went to Vietnam in 1965, and part of him never came home.
Now, more than 10 years after his death, his adult children have learned new things about
him, thanks to a tenacious Okinawan man.

Decades later, 'Vietnam syndrome' still casts doubts on military action

The Vietnam War’s lasting impact on America’s foreign policy is largely characterized by doubt,
in the opinions of many analysts. Driving those doubts is the desire to avoid another open-ended
commitment with an uncertain endgame.

Volunteers scattered across the country have been working to gather photos of every one of
the 58,300 dead American servicemembers whose names are listed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Vietnam leads to the death of the draft and the rise of the professional soldier

While Vietnam was a low point, it also served as the engine of change that brought about perhaps
the single greatest reform to transform the military in the post-Vietnam war era: the launch
of the all-volunteer force.

Vietnam POW returns to the Hanoi Hilton in search of closure

Lee Ellis recounts his time as a prisoner of the infamous Hanoi Hilton. His return to Vietnam,
decades later, brought back memories better left in the past.

Features

Voices from Vietnam

Voices of Vietnam

For some, it takes only six words to sum up what it was like to serve in Vietnam. For others, the memories take more time to unravel, with passages full of exact dates and names and ranks and, mostly, unhappy endings.

“VIET VICTORY NEAR,” blared a headline across the top of Stars and Stripes’ front page.Farther down the page, a smaller article titled “3 Aides Seized in Vietnam Battle” told a far less celebratory tale.

For those who prepared Vietnam's fallen, a lasting dread

Gary Redlinski says he can hear the Hueys, Chinooks and C-130s, all bearing dozens upon dozens of bodies in a never-ending procession. The putrid smell tickles his nose.

Rolling Thunder escalated US involvement in Vietnam's civil war

In 1964, Keith Connolly was a young Air Force pilot and was among the first Americans to fly sorties in the F-100 Super Sabre fighter bomber targeting the North Vietnamese communist insurgency.

War forced hard choices for those who fought and those who did not

Millions of Americans in the 1960s and early 1970s had to decide what they would do when called to serve in a conflict that had mushroomed into the most polarizing event in the nation’s history since the Civil War.

Weapons of war: US military tries to adapt to unconventional warfare

Among the many notable changes in weaponry and tactics for the U.S. military during the war, one of the most enduring was the reliance on helicopters as both a transport tool and an offensive weapon.

As the war rages abroad, counterculture rocks America

In 1959, “Leave It to Beaver” was in its second season on TV, the first Barbie dolls hit store shelves and Elvis Presley was on the music charts. That same year, North Vietnamese communist forces began building the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Southeast Asia.

When the civil rights movement became a casualty of war

Sammy Younge Jr., a black former Navy sailor attempting to use an Alabama gas station “whites only” restroom, was shot dead by the station attendant. Days later, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee became the first civil rights organization to oppose the war in Vietnam.

Features

Authors explore the music and sound of the Vietnam era

Doug Bradley and Craig Werner, background, from left, with their book "We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War" at the Stars and Stripes central office, Washington, D.C., on Aug. 26, 2016. The book, which explores how U.S. troops used music to cope with the complexities of the Vietnam War in country and up on their return to the States, was named the Best Music Book of 2015 by Rolling Stone magazine.

Doug Bradley, a Vietnam veteran, and Craig Werner, a professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, met at a Christmas party at the Madison Vet Center in 2003. They struck up a conversation about ’60s music that soon took on a life of its own as several veterans joined in and shared their stories and experiences. As the Thunderclap Newman song says, there was something in the air.

“It was really amazing to watch. And then, even though we had just met, we sort of said, ‘There’s something going on here,’ ” said Bradley, 69. “And a couple of months later we grabbed a beer on the terrace there at the university and sat out on the lake and said, ‘Let’s write a book.’”

Their 2015 book, “We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War,” explores the music of the era, how troops used music to cope with life in a war zone and how veterans turned to music as a means of survival and reintegration upon coming home.

As they wrote, they found a niche.

“This is telling part of the story that we didn’t hear (in) other places,” said Werner, 64. “When we started out we thought we were going to organize it around a Vietnam vets’ Top 20 — choose 20 songs and use those to tell the story. And then we started interviewing people and it became a Top 200 or a Top 2,000 or something like that very, very rapidly. Ten years later, we decided it was just time to finish writing the book, and part of that was way too many of the guys who we talked to were starting to die. We wanted to get it out while as many as possible were still with us.”

Bradley and Werner also ended up co-teaching a class called “The Vietnam Era: Music, Media and Mayhem” at Wisconsin. They dug into the soundtrack of Vietnam for a decade, conducting hundreds of interviews that centered on a common question: What was your song?

“I think, frankly, it was a way for some of these people to get back home from the war.”

- Doug Bradley, Vietnam veteran

“We learned very early on to start our interviews with, ‘Did you have a song that you connect with Vietnam?’,” Werner said. “Because, this is no secret, if you go to a Vietnam vet and say, ‘Hey, man, what was it like?’ Good damn luck. You’re not getting anywhere. But the music opened that up.”

The authors had a good handle on the material. Bradley, a music lover from Philadelphia, was drafted into the Army in March 1970 and soaked up the soundtrack of Vietnam while serving as an information specialist at Long Binh from November ’70 to November ’71.

Werner played organ in a band named Armageddon, gigging in front of GIs and hippies alike around Fort Carson, Colo., during the war. He’s written other music books and is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s nominating committee. Despite their musical bona fides, Bradley and Werner still found themselves surprised at times.

“I sort of expected a little more edgy things, maybe a little politics,” Bradley said. “Not the black and white politics we had in America at the time, but what stunned me was there’s ‘My Girl’ and (Otis Redding’s) ‘(Sittin’ on the) Dock of the Bay’ and there’s (Peter, Paul and Mary’s) ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’ and (The Beach Boys’) ‘Sloop John B’ — ‘Detroit City’ by Bobby Bare. So many songs about longing and wanting to be somewhere else and wanting to be home or missing the person you loved. And I didn’t expect that in those conversations.”

They also found that songs held different meanings for different people. The track from which their book takes its title is a prime example. “We Gotta Get Out of This Place,” written by Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann, was pitched to the Righteous Brothers as the follow-up to their 1965 No. 1 hit “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’.”

“Cynthia Weil sent us the demo copy and, man, it would have been a No. 1 hit, without any question, by the Righteous Brothers,” Werner said. Instead, the get-out-of-the-ghetto song was recorded by the Animals, who were making a move from working-class Newcastle upon Tyne, England, to London.

Released in July 1965 in the U.K. and September ’65 in the United States, “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” and its bubbling bass line rose to No. 2 and No. 13 on the charts in those countries, respectively. Meanwhile, the song took on a life of its own in Vietnam. It resonated more strongly as the war dragged on and fell out of public favor.

Bradley recalls hearing the song for the first time after arriving in country. Two soldiers from his new office at Long Binh were preparing to leave Vietnam, which was cause for celebration.

“We’re coming in, two guys are going out, so they had a DEROS (Date Eligible For Return From Overseas) party,” Bradley said. “And it was one of the best parties I’ve ever been to. I’m in country two weeks, and they played ‘We Gotta Get Out of This Place.’ And we all joined arms and sang and we changed the words. When they go, ‘(girl there’s a) better life for you and me,’ we said, ‘in the U.S.A.’ That was our closing line.”

“We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War” presents a thorough history of how technology — transistor radios, access to inexpensive reel-to-reel and cassette decks and the establishment of Armed Forces Vietnam Network radio — and cultural factors turned Vietnam into the so-called Rock and Roll War. There are USO shows, Filipino cover bands and minstrels in the hooch. You can read about the four most popular acts among troops (James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix and Creedence Clearwater Revival).

Bradley and Warner delve into the patriotism that pushed Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler’s “The Ballad of the Green Berets” to No. 1 in 1966 — and the parade of parodies that followed. They collected this chronology through conventional research, reporting and writing, but also by putting voices of the veterans front and center by letting them write about their experiences.

These “solos,” by a diverse group that includes white, black, Hispanic and Native American veterans, provide the beating heart in the book’s narrative. The passages, and many of the behind-the-scenes interviews, served another important purpose.

“I think, frankly, it was a way for some of these people to get back home from the war, Bradley said. “There were many, many moments, almost universal, when a person would start to tell us a story they’d never told before . . . Sometimes we’d go to sit down with them and they’d have their kids in the room and they’d talk — that was when they finally got home.”

VIETNAM VETERAN'S TOP TEN SONGS

1. “We Gotta Get Out of This Place,” The Animals

2. “Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag,” Country Joe and the Fish

3. “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” Peter, Paul and Mary

4. “Fortunate Son,” Creedence Clearwater Revival

5. “Purple Haze,” The Jimi Hendrix Experience

6. “What’s Going On,” Marvin Gaye

7. “Detroit City,” Bobby Bare

8. “Chain of Fools,” Aretha Franklin

9. “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’,” Nancy Sinatra

10. “My Girl,” The Temptations

Submitted by Doug Bradley and Craig Werner, authors of “We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War,” who interviewed about 300 veterans while writing the book.

“We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War” was well received critically, earning praise from Rolling Stone as Best Music Book of 2015. Bradley and Werner hope that getting troops home, a return so many were denied, can be part of their book’s legacy.

“I think the legacy of the book is that — maybe 40 years too late — we found a way to have a dialogue with the men and women who fought in Vietnam, and that music was essential to enabling them to heal,” said Bradley, who named “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” and Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” when asked for “his song” from Vietnam. “I think the book’s about healing. I want the legacy to be that two or three hundred people that we talked to were able to get back home and to heal.”

Added Werner, who cited CCR’s “Who’ll Stop the Rain” as the song he associates with Vietnam: “We usually close our class with it, and usually — the last few times I’ve listened to it, it really hit me. . . . I’m looking at our TAs (teaching assistants), these younger (Iraq and Afghanistan) vets, (and) I’m just thinking … let’s not do this again … can we please learn something?”

Doug Bradley in Vietnam, 1971. Bradley, the co-author of "We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War," was an Army information specialist at Long Binh in 1970 and '71.COURTESY OF DOUG BRADLEY